Conventional clip-in fuse holders for cylindrical cartridge fuses exhibit certain deficiencies with respect to terminal interconnection methods. Such holders typically consist of a pair of spring clips mounted on a base and configured to engage the end terminals of a cylindrical cartridge fuse by pressing insertion. The clips, together with unitary or separate terminal lugs, are normally secured to the base by a metallic rivet passing through a hole in the clip base and through a matching hole passing through the mounting base. Such riveted fuse mounts when fabricated in the form of arrays of parallel individual fuse holders frequently require one or more bus elements to interconnect preselected groups of common fuse terminals, as for example by a common ground strap. These are typically fashioned in the form of a perforated strap to be held in contact with the chosen clips by the rivets. Where the chosen common terminals are adjacent, the bus typically takes the form of a perforated strap with uniform hole spacing. If the common terminals are not adjacent, or if there are short insulating barrier walls between them, the bus must be configured with right-angle tabs. For limited production runs of such arrays the cost of fabricating uniquely configured buses can significantly add to the manufacturing costs. Moreover, riveted buses cannot be modified without substantial disassembly of the array. Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide an easily engaged and removed bus that can be readily configured to engage arbitrarily selected clips along a given side of such an array.
Additionally, the cost of fabricating fuse mount arrays of various lengths in limited production runs can be excessive, owing to tooling costs. Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a means whereby arrays of varying number of fuse mounts can be fabricated without incurring such extra costs.
It is a further object of the invention to provide inexpensive busing means for interconnecting an arbitrary group of fuse terminals of an array so fabricated.
The busses of the prior art have their strap or tab portions generally underlying and sandwiched between the clips to be connected and the mounting base. To avoid a vertical displacement between each clip at each fuse holder station of the array and the latter clip, it was necessary to place a spacer beneath each of the latter clips. Accordingly, it is another object of the invention to provide a bus and clip construction which eliminates the necessity for spacers to avoid vertical displacement between the opposed clips at each station.